


If We All Could Be So

by jedusaur



Category: Bandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Coffee, College, Fluff, M/M, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2011-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/pseuds/jedusaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Did you just put rainbow sprinkles on a mocha?" asks Patrick incredulously.</p><p>"Yup," says Pete. "It's a crucial step in my seduction plot. Step two is being amazing at history. Step three, blowjobs."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If We All Could Be So

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Italiano available: [If We All Could Be So](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6168217) by [blurryfaceiero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurryfaceiero/pseuds/blurryfaceiero)



> Title from Ben Folds. Thanks to [](http://zarathuse.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://zarathuse.livejournal.com/)**zarathuse** for the beta.
> 
> A podfic of this fic by draconic_girl can be found [here](http://draconic-girl.livejournal.com/23752.html).

"You are the sexiest motherfucker who has ever bought a cup of coffee from this fine establishment," Pete tells Mikey solemnly.

"White chocolate mocha," Mikey says. "Real white chocolate, not syrup. I know you squirrel away the good stuff back there."

"I squirrel it away for you, dear heart," Pete assures him, reaching down for the bag of white chocolate shavings. Mikey sticks his thumbs in his pockets, rocking forward onto his turned-in toes as he waits for Pete to make his drink. It's the cutest thing Pete has seen since the last time he saw Mikey doing something cute, which was of course the last time he saw Mikey. Pete lets out an epic lovelorn sigh, gazing wistfully over the coffee cart at his soulmate.

His soulmate taps his foot impatiently. "C'mon, dude, I've got class in three minutes."

Nine AM on Mondays, thinks Pete. Last semester he had Mikey's schedule memorized, but he's still got some research to do before he figures out the new one. "So," he says brightly as he froths the milk, "what are you taking this semester?"

Pete is surreptitious like a declawed ninja kitten. No one will ever find him out.

Mikey makes a face. "Nothing interesting, just getting my gen ed requirements out of the way. Calculus, bio, comp, and American history."

Pete almost drops the chocolate shavings. "Ooh, which American history? I've got Gibbs, Tuesday-Thursday at ten."

"No shit? Me too." Mikey almost smiles at him. Not quite, but almost.

Pete tops off the mocha with a shake of rainbow sprinkles and hands it to Mikey, grinning widely. "Awesome, I'll see you tomorrow then."

Mikey takes a long sip before saying, "You'll see me sooner than that if you're still working in an hour. Your little den of sin is on my way to the life sciences building. I am powerless to resist." He lifts a hand in halfhearted farewell and departs, sucking down coffee like a kid with a Slurpee.

Pete draws a mental map of the campus, triangulating using the location of the life sciences building and the direction in which Mikey is headed. The nine AM class must be comp, then, and bio at ten. He files away the partially completed schedule in his head and turns his smile on the next student in line.

***

The next morning, he leaves for class early and stops by the cart beforehand. Patrick has a line ten people long, and shoots Pete a glare when he ducks in to whip together a mocha. Pete ignores it. As a work-study peon employed by the cafeteria overlords, he is entitled to one free beverage per work shift, and he didn't have one yesterday.

"Did you just put rainbow sprinkles on a mocha?" asks Patrick incredulously.

"Yup," says Pete. "It's a crucial step in my seduction plot. Step two is being amazing at history. Step three, blowjobs."

Patrick opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, but the blonde chick currently waiting for a latte starts drumming her fingers on the edge of the cart, and he turns his attention back to making coffee.

"That is unconscionably rude," Pete, who is not on the clock, informs the girl. He heads off to class, ignoring her glare.

When he walks into the classroom, Mikey is already there, chin settled deeply in his hands. The second the coffee passes through the doorway, his head floats upward and vaguely Peteward, led by his nose. Pete strolls over to the seat next to him and sets the cup on Mikey's tablet desk.

Mikey looks confused. "Are you giving me free coffee?"

Pete nods.

Mikey looks down at the cup, then back up. "Why?"

There's a delicate balance, Pete has found over the years he's spent honing his flirting skills, between honesty and tact. If he leans too much toward the tact side of things, sometimes people don't notice that he's interested. If he lets things go too far in the other direction, he gets called a creep. He knows which one he prefers.

"I'm trying to get into your pants," he explains.

"Ah," says Mikey, and takes a sip.

***

Pete actually is amazing at history. It just makes sense to him. He hates stories where the hero beats the odds at the last minute and everything wraps up neatly into an ending with a moral. Morals are not Pete's strength at all. Real life is much more his style.

Mikey isn't quite as awful at the subject as Pete hoped. If he were really bad, then Pete could take him under his wing, help him with the hard parts, maybe end up tutoring him in one of their dorm rooms sometime. He's not bad enough to need actual tutoring. But his grades aren't as good as Pete's, and he doesn't turn Pete down when he offers to study together at a nearby cafe.

Unfortunately, Mikey doesn't seem to have gotten the message that "study together" means "have sex." He must not watch the same porn Pete does.

Instead, Pete watches in dismay as Mikey pulls out his actual history books, along with a study guide, a notebook, a highlighter, and about nine different kinds of pencils. "Boston Tea Party," he says to Pete, clicking a mechanical pencil twice in punctuation. "I was basically asleep when he talked about it. How much more do I have to know than 'they taxed the tea, we got pissed and started a war by throwing shit out of a boat'?"

Pete taps his lips with a finger. He'd really rather spend the evening whispering sweet nothings against his love's creamy thighs, but the American Revolution _is_ one of his top three favorite wars of all time.

Forty minutes later, he's unhooking the Jigglypuff keychain from Mikey's backpack because he needs a Benjamin Franklin and he doesn't have any hundred-dollar bills. "Okay, okay," he says to Mikey, who's finishing off the bottle of Sam Adams Pete ordered to represent the American patriots, because he is oh so clever. "Dude, will you quit drinking the Sons of Liberty? Okay, so Franklin was all like 'pay them back! Nine thousand pounds!' which was a super ricockulous amount of money, right, and these four merchant dudes offered to pay Lord North back but he--hey, hey, are you listening?"

Mikey is pushing the plastic ketchup cups representing the British ships around the plate of water and teabags representing the Boston Harbor. He flicks the edge of the one with BEAVER written on the side in Sharpie, flipping it over.

Pete crosses his arms. "They didn't capsize the ships. You're rewriting history."

Mikey picks up Benjamin Franklin and makes his little Jigglypuff feet dance on the bottom of the ketchup cup. "I don't actually like history very much," he says. "You're better at teaching it than Gibbs is, though."

"I'm better at oral sex than Gibbs is, too," says Pete, although he doesn't actually know that for a fact. "Want to ditch the history and come over to my place?"

"Yes," says Mikey, and Pete is halfway out of his seat before he continues, "but I'm not going to. I spent most of high school fucking around, and it wasn't good for me. I'm waiting for something more serious now."

"Me too," says Pete instantly. "Let's get married."

Mikey gives him a rueful look, then turns the Beaver back over. "So tell me about Lord North," he says, and Pete reluctantly sits back down.

***

Pete has been kneeling in front of a classroom in the math building for eight minutes, untying and retying his sneaker. This is one of the last two possibilities for Mikey's calculus class, and the other one ends at 8:50 in the morning, so he's really hoping this is the right one. It was supposed to get out five minutes ago, and he can hear the loud shuffling and quiet grumbling from the impatient students still sitting inside.

Finally, the teacher notices the clock and wraps up the lecture, and people start swarming out of the door. Near the end of the exodus, Mikey appears. Pete does a mental fistpump as he tightens his laces for the last time and stands up. "Hey, Mikey!" he calls, trying to inject an appropriate amount of surprise into his voice. It doesn't work very well. Pete's not good at fake.

Mikey lifts his chin in Pete's direction, which is his friendly hello. His regular hello is eye contact. When he's in a really good mood, he subvocalizes a grunt.

"Want coffee?" Pete offers as they head toward the student center. He would have brought it with him, except that would be a little too obvious even for him.

Mikey lifts an eyebrow. "Still trying?"

Pete nods cheerfully. "When you find your soulmate, you don't give up just because he's not in the mood," he says.

"You do if you're not a stalker," Mikey points out, but he doesn't look too bothered. There's not much that can get him to walk away from free coffee.

When Pete comes up to the coffee cart, Patrick rolls his eyes so hard Pete is sure he catches a glimpse of the optic nerve. "Again?" Patrick demands. "Do you really think drowning the poor guy in coffee is the healthiest way to deal with this demented obsession of yours?"

Pete looks at Mikey. "What do you think, are you sick of caffeine yet?" He doesn't wait for an answer, just steps behind the cart to start the mocha. Patrick has gone furiously red, and doesn't say anything else while Pete makes the drink and hands it to Mikey.

Mikey walks across the student center to a bench and sits down. He takes a long sip before asking, "Demented obsession?"

"I wouldn't call it demented," says Pete, sitting on the bench next to him. "If you were telling me to leave you alone and I didn't stop, that would definitely be weird, but as long as you're still putting up with me it's just a plain old obsession."

Mikey is quiet until he finishes his coffee. He aims carefully and lobs the empty paper cup into a trash can at the other end of the bench, then turns back to Pete and says, "I thought you joked around like that with everyone."

This is the other problem with being too honest. If they don't think Pete's a creep, they think he's just kidding. Somehow, the blunter he is, the less likely people are to believe that he means what he says. It makes no fucking sense.

"I'm gonna try this again, then," says Pete. He looks straight into Mikey's eyes. "I want you. To clarify, _I_ refers to me, _want_ refers to both emotional and sexual desire, and _you_ refers to you and not anyone else. Did you think the fucking rainbow sprinkles came standard on a white chocolate mocha?"

Mikey's lips taste like whipped cream.

***

"Gooooood morning, sexypants!" Pete yells at Mikey from four feet away.

Mikey scratches his calf with his other foot and gives Pete owl eyes. It's adorable. "Espresso," he says. Pete glances at his watch as he pushes the button on the machine. Two and a half minutes until Mikey needs to be in class.

He shuts off the switch and thrusts the coffee into Mikey's hand, not bothering with a lid. Mikey's only going to pound it like cheap vodka and toss the cup in a second anyway. "See you between 9:54 and 9:57," he says, and plants a kiss on Mikey's cheek. Mikey, sure enough, slams the entire shot of espresso in one gulp. Pete winces and makes a mental note not to expect a blowjob that night.

Mikey lifts the empty cup in a little salute and drops it in the trash on his way to class. Pete just smiles, because Mikey knows what the free coffee means, and Pete knows that the little salute meant _I love you too._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] If We All Could Be So](https://archiveofourown.org/works/396435) by [draconic_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconic_girl/pseuds/draconic_girl)




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